Length at first maturity / Size / Weight / Age

Sprawling ramose branches, with spiky surface up to 60 cm long; 1 - 5 cm wide. Black with green patches internally and externally. Oscula 0.1 - 0.3 cm in diameter, on side of branches (Ref. 415). Smaller specimens grows as lobes, runners, massive or encrusting. Surface: covered with conules; mostly or entirely smooth for small specimens. Sometimes greenish-yellow. Tough consistency; resilient and barely compressible. Exudate is dark purplish when squeezed. Oscules are scattered or in a row, slightly raised on small lobes and surrounded by a thin collar (Ref. 85482).

Biology
Glossary
(e.g. epibenthic)

Reef; mangrove; seagrass environments (Ref. 415). On hard substrates, often hosting the zoanthid Parazoanthus swiftii (Ref. 85482). Commensal with amphipods (Ref. 82302). Members of the class Demospongiae are hermaphroditic. Life cycle: The zygote develops into parenchymella larva (free-swimming) before settling down on a substrate where it grows into a young sponge (Ref. 833).